Under Attack

Firstly my apologies for the somewhat intermittent posts on the blog over the last few weeks. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to manage the life/work/blog balance and the blog is losing out at present.

We've had the normal busy time over the last few days. This week is the start of the second half of the school term. Our Year 7 and 8 pupils immediately faced a zonal mock examination and sat papers in Maths, English, Kiswahili, Science and Social Studies. I've questioned the value of this particular exam before and this week's experience did nothing to make me any more enthusiastic about them. There were problems with the Maths papers which drew comment from schools around our zone. The English and Kiswahili papers were also of questionable value. We'll have to wait for the final results for our pupils for a little while as the Kenyan National Union of Teachers called a strike on Monday, so public school teachers have been out on strike since then. The marking of English and Kiswahili composition papers and final compilation of marks for the exams are now on hold until the strike is over. This could be some time. The union officials are predicting that it will be the "father of all strikes" according to a newspaper report. We will, in the meantime, get on with the next phase of our school's project to make learning more exciting.

Last week-end we were made aware of a very sad, but unfortunately not uncommon, case of hardship and suffering. A young widow came to see us and explained that she had been forced to leave her home just outside Oyugis (the nearest town to us) because of violence against her committed by members of her community. Her brother-in-law was involved in what sounded like a nasty fight during which he badly cut his opponent with a panga (machete). In retaliation some members of the community burnt the lady's house and its contents down, leaving her homeless and in fear of her life. She quickly took herself and her four children to her mother's house which is close to us. This is a far from ideal situation for her family. At least one of her children in suffering from malnutrition and the food situation for the whole family is very dire. The baby that she brought with her was born as a result of the lady having been 'inherited' by a man in her late husband's family shortly after the death of her husband last year. This practice does little other than cause unwanted pregnancies and help to spread HIV/AIDS. We were, once again, left in the unenviable situation of 'playing God' with this lady and her family's lives. We gave her some food to tide her over and will see what else we can do to help when Mary, our manager, returns from taking a few days leave tomorrow.

I wrote about some unwanted visitors to my house last year and the steps we had to take to dislodge them. I am unhappy to report that my house is, once again, under attack from termites. For the last couple of days I've been waking up to find a new heap of soil from their digging in the living room and a good number of termites, (which look like a horrible cross between a maggot and an ant) swarming around the hole in the floor that they come up through. I think that this termite activity was triggered off by the rain we had a few days ago. I've been trying my best to stop their activity by pouring washing up liquid and boiling water down the hole and then blocking it up with small stones. I thought I'd been quite successful until this evening,when I noticed a termite mound with attendant termites half-way up the door frame of my office. The battle has now entered a more serious phase and strong chemicals have been poured down the the most recent hole. I'm hoping this will deter the creatures from starting again in another part of the house for long enough to get any remaining holes in the floor sealed with concrete. I hate to think what it looks like under the house. I have visions of the whole house collapsing into a maze of termite tunnels. Unlike many of our neighbours I am fortunate in having a very solidly built house. The termites cause a huge amount of damage to the local houses which are made of compacted mud and timber - ideal materials for termites to destroy completely.